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Add '127.0.0.1 xn–9q8h' to /etc/hosts gives you "localghost"

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Re: Add '127.0.0.1 xn–9q8h' to /etc/hosts gives you "localghost"

#41

Post by jiveturkey »

DyslexicAtheist wrote: post #10
IHLayman wrote: post #4

I hate to be a spoilsport, but this is a good reminder that https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IDN_homograph_attack is still possible in some domains and with some browsers and CLI tools, although some of the easier tricks to detect have been mitigated.

if you run pihole or a local dnsmasq/unbound it should be possible to mitigate it by sinkholing any unicode domains, e.g. with dnsmasq (requires a patch https://github.com/spacedingo/dnsmasq-regexp_2.76 ) you can do this: address=/:xn--*:/0.0.0.0 does anyone know if something like this is possible with unbound?

tip of the decade!

Re: Add '127.0.0.1 xn–9q8h' to /etc/hosts gives you "localghost"

#42

Post by brandonhorst »

netsharc wrote: post #35

Hmm, I wonder if that's going to be the next battle field for URLs: Facebook will try to register its logo as an emoji, and you'd just need to go to http://[f] to open their site. There already is an emoji for apple (the fruit, not the company). Oh the horrors. I should start an emoji NIC!

There is already an emoji for the company:  (only works on iStuff)

Re: Add '127.0.0.1 xn–9q8h' to /etc/hosts gives you "localghost"

#43

Post by manifestsilence »

netsharc wrote: post #35

Hmm, I wonder if that's going to be the next battle field for URLs: Facebook will try to register its logo as an emoji, and you'd just need to go to http://[f] to open their site. There already is an emoji for apple (the fruit, not the company). Oh the horrors. I should start an emoji NIC!

These would be less than convenient to type, but perhaps as we go more and more towards a non-typing web where a walled-garden start page and predefined links lead to the most popular sites with a click, these URLs will become fashionable. I think if so, this will herald the impending death of the human-read and typed URL in favor of start page links and search results.

Re: Add '127.0.0.1 xn–9q8h' to /etc/hosts gives you "localghost"

#44

Post by billpg »

tialaramex wrote: post #16
jackewiehose wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is this even a thing?

There are a bunch of different human writing systems. All of them are weird because they were invented by humans, most of them are very weird indeed because they were invented by humans a long time ago and then gradually mutated. The Latin system is the one you're using here. It's very popular. Most humans in the integrated tribes are somewhat familiar with it‡. It has twenty six "letters" and then twenty six more "c…

I vaguely recall that the double-hyphen used to be disallowed in domain names, reserving them for future definition. "xn--" becoming that future definition.

I'm having trouble confirming this as the double-hyphen is now very much allowed, thanks to IDN.

Re: Add '127.0.0.1 xn–9q8h' to /etc/hosts gives you "localghost"

#45

Post by blacksmith_tb »

jackewiehose wrote: post #34
iso1210 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imagine if DNS consisted only of Arabic characters. Imagine how grumpy you'd be that you couldn't go to newyork.gov.us for your local government website, and instead had to go to نيويورك instead? Assuming you can't read Arabic, how on earth would you even recognise that address, let alone remember how to type it.

Well, I'd probably had to learn something like this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arabic_chat_alphabet I always assumed the non-latin-alphabet people know their way around this because they already used the internet before unicode-domains.

I have a few years of rusty undergrad Arabic fading in my past, and my take is that non-native speakers would struggle with an ad hoc transliteration system like this (imagine a non-native English-speaker trying to read 133tspeak...)

Re: Add '127.0.0.1 xn–9q8h' to /etc/hosts gives you "localghost"

#46

Post by archi42 »

DyslexicAtheist wrote: post #38
rahuldottech wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But... What about legit unicode domains? I own a couple that I use for personal projects or file sharing.

indeed those would get thrown under the bus. it's a trade-off and depends on how paranoid you want to be.

Two ideas to lessen the trade-off:

1. Use a browser extension that throws a warning on all unicode domains (maybe even with unicode highlighting). Drawback: Needs to be done per-device.

2. Let your pihole MitM all https traffic with a certificate you do NOT trust (maybe create one per domain, so you can add it to the trusted list); if the connection is over http, upgrade it to https (if the server doesn't speak https, proxy it). Drawback: It's much more complicated, and if your bank happens to be called e.g. "Bank of Zürich" you still need to take a look at the IDN to determine if you're on the right website (or add an exception).

Re: Add '127.0.0.1 xn–9q8h' to /etc/hosts gives you "localghost"

#47

Post by JadeNB »

manifestsilence wrote: post #43
netsharc wrote: post #35

Hmm, I wonder if that's going to be the next battle field for URLs: Facebook will try to register its logo as an emoji, and you'd just need to go to http://[f] to open their site. There already is an emoji for apple (the fruit, not the company). Oh the horrors. I should start an emoji NIC!

These would be less than convenient to type, but perhaps as we go more and more towards a non-typing web where a walled-garden start page and predefined links lead to the most popular sites with a click, these URLs will become fashionable. I think if so, this will herald the impending death of the human-read and typed URL in favor of start page links and search results.

> as we go more and more towards a non-typing web where a walled-garden start page and predefined links lead to the most popular sites with a click

Just a reminder that this is backwards, not forwards: this was my first experience of the Internet, through AOL, and I imagine I'm not the only one.

Re: Add '127.0.0.1 xn–9q8h' to /etc/hosts gives you "localghost"

#48

Post by downerending »

tialaramex wrote: post #16
jackewiehose wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is this even a thing?

There are a bunch of different human writing systems. All of them are weird because they were invented by humans, most of them are very weird indeed because they were invented by humans a long time ago and then gradually mutated. The Latin system is the one you're using here. It's very popular. Most humans in the integrated tribes are somewhat familiar with it‡. It has twenty six "letters" and then twenty six more "c…

Perhaps ironically, URLs were never meant for human consumption in the first place. You were meant to "travel" to various sites via search indices, etc. (Think Google.)

Viewed in that light, restricting DNS names to ASCII as a way to reduce bugs, security issues, etc., makes a lot of sense.

Re: Add '127.0.0.1 xn–9q8h' to /etc/hosts gives you "localghost"

#49

Post by JadeNB »

jackewiehose wrote: post #34
iso1210 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imagine if DNS consisted only of Arabic characters. Imagine how grumpy you'd be that you couldn't go to newyork.gov.us for your local government website, and instead had to go to نيويورك instead? Assuming you can't read Arabic, how on earth would you even recognise that address, let alone remember how to type it.

Well, I'd probably had to learn something like this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arabic_chat_alphabet I always assumed the non-latin-alphabet people know their way around this because they already used the internet before unicode-domains.

> I always assumed the non-latin-alphabet people know their way around this because they already used the internet before unicode-domains.

But that's not a very good reason to continue it (besides which, there are new people coming to the Internet every day).

Re: Add '127.0.0.1 xn–9q8h' to /etc/hosts gives you "localghost"

#50

Post by kick »

hippish wrote: post #36
icebraining wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nope, Twitter replaces the unicode character with an SVG image, so it should show the same for everyone.

Depends on how you're browsing. The legacy fallback does not replace it, eg when you have js disabled

I have JS disabled, and just viewed it in both the legacy mobile view and the legacy desktop view. Neither have what was originally described.
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